Ah, I located what I was thinking of, and it’s not really apposite, though the way it was reported made me think it was. It’s U. S. v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266 (2002), in which one of the factors leading to the stopping of a minivan that contained marijuana was the attempt by the driver to avoid a known checkpoint for illegal aliens. However, the minivan did not turn and retreat from the checkpoint, but rather used an elaborate set of rural roads to try and avoid it. This, along with some other factors, lead the border patrol agent to pull the minivan over. This was held to be constitutional by the Court, which looked at the “totality of the circumstances,” rather than doing as the Ninth Circuit had and looking at each factor piecemeal. That’s very akin to what I said above.
So, SO FAR, in my hypothetical Ohio, to stop you in the first place the officer would still have to have some reasonable suspicion of your illegal activity, and that couldn’t be simply the fact you tried to avoid going into a public place with an ID checkpoint. So far… :eek:
Phew, glad I found that. I KNEW I wasn’t dreaming it…
Yeah, I agree that the harder we squeeze, the more cracks we can find to fall through.
SCOTUS has weighed in on the right to travel a few times, including US v Guest and Shapiro v Thompson. In both cases, Justice Stewart wrote that the right had been clearly established. In the majority opinion for Guest , he wrote “It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized.” In Shapiro, Stewart’s concurring opinion said “it is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, … it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all.”
This has been a fascinating discussion… thanks to DSYoung and the others who have been contributing to this thread.
A caution on the “right to travel,” which, by the way, is one of the “privileges or immunities” you have as a citizen of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment, though other rationales have been offered: that right simply means you get to move from state to state without interference from the federal government, or the states. It doesn’t mean you get to specify HOW you get to do that, as the plaintiff in the Gilmore case discovered. He raised that issue, but the Court dismissed it with the reminder that Mr. Gilmore was able to get to wherever he was going some way other than by airplane. So the federal government can’t make it so I can’t leave Ohio without my “papers,” but they could make it so I have to walk to Indiana, I expect, if they wanted to. :eek:
It has been a fun thread. And, of course, keep in mind that, in most cases, what I post is not my personal opinion as to how things should be interpreted, but simply my legalistic side pointing out that they don’t have to be read a specific way advocated by someone in the thread.
